Posts Tagged ‘Jerzy Skolimowski’

As Damon Wise writes, in part, in the August 31, 2016 issue of Variety, “it has been said of Jerzy Skolimowski that making films turned him into a nomad. Forced by principle to leave his native Poland after the repressive government shelved his surreal, semi-autobiographical and politically incendiary 1967 film Hands Up!, the director moved first to the U.K. and then to the U.S. before finally returning to Poland in the early 2000s.

The journey home also resulted in Skolimowski’s first film in 17 years. After suffering a personal and financial failure with 1991’s 30 Door Key, the director took time out to explore his talents as a painter. The success of his comeback film, 2008’s Four Nights With Anna, encouraged him to return to cinema, and 2010’s Essential Killing claimed acting and directing prizes at that year’s Venice Film Festival.

Now 78, Skolimowksi comes to the 2016 festival to collect the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, a celebration of a career that has spanned almost six decades and numerous cities, and perhaps marking a spiritual homecoming of sorts for the wandering artist. ‘I feel blessed and honored to be placed among Orson Welles, Fellini, Antonioni, Buñuel, Kubrick, and magnificent others,’ he says of the award. He adds with typical self-deprecating modesty, ‘but I still have to prove to myself that I really deserve it . . .’

Unusually for an auteur director, Skolimowski’s films defy categorization even by the many periods of his life defined by émigré status, and he’s not precious about the work. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he says, ‘I don’t look back at my films at all. I know well what is good in some of them. I know what’s bad in others. And I know I cannot change any part of them — what is done is done . . .’

Thankfully, Skolimowski is a director who has not been thwarted by either his occasional crisis of confidence or his mistreatment at the hands of the authorities . . . Indeed, his filmography is even beginning to gather pace again. Asked about this newfound vigor so late in life, he replies, quite casually, ‘by the standards established by Manuel de Oliveira I’m still a young filmmaker.’”

“To those who like me — I’m back. And to those who don’t like me — I’m back.” — Jerzy Skolimowski, 2008

Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing (2010) is one the best films of the year, just getting a release in a very limited fashion in the United States as 2011 draws to a close. Earlier this year, I was interviewing the British director Michael Sarne, a friend of Skolimowski’s, and rather than talk about his own career, Sarne kept interrupting himself to urge me repeatedly, “you’ve got to see Essential Killing.” Now I can see why.

Vincent Gallo doesn’t speak a word in the film, yet is utterly convincing as Mohammed, a man captured by American forces in the desert of an unnamed country, flown to an Eastern European country, also unnamed, and subjected to torture. We get brief glimpses of the action from Mohammed’s point of view; he can’t hear, and seems to be affected with tinnitus, so everything for him is just a constant, irritating ringing in his ears.

Mohammed escapes, and goes on the run, killing to survive, but in the end succumbs to a combination of the harsh climate, lack of food, and wounds suffered during his escape. Intercut with this are flashbacks of his earlier life, which seem simultaneously idyllic and mysterious. We never know why he’s been captured; we never know what crimes he may or may not have committed; all we see is Mohammed’s fight to survive in a hostile landscape.

The end result is a shattering experience, superbly directed by the 73 year old Skolimowski, who took 17 years off from directing to paint and act, before returning to film with Four Nights with Anna (Cztery noce z Anną) in 2008. Born in 1938 in Poland, Skolimowski was part of the Polish New Wave in the 1960s, with such landmark films as Identification Marks: None (Rysopis, 1964), Walkover (Walkower, 1965) and Barrier (Bariera, 1966), but these films are child’s play compared to this new work. A truly international film, shot in Poland, Norway, Ireland, and Hungary, Essential Killing is essentially a parable, rather than a political film, and remains very much an enigma throughout its compact 83 minute running time.

As Skolomowski said of the film in a recent interview, “I don’t even say whether the film starts in Afghanistan, Iraq or maybe some other place, whether it’s an American military base, where the prisoners are kept, whether it’s situated in any of those countries. I don’t say whether the plane which is landing somewhere in Europe is really landing in Szymany, in Poland. For a long time not even a word is spoken in Polish. Only later, in the second part of the film, we can hear parts of dialogues in Polish.

So, all this is very enigmatic, camouflaged, because it isn’t at all about any documentary truth. The film doesn’t describe any particular event. It is all fantasy. And it’s kept rather in the style of a poem or a fable which merely slides over some events which could possibly happen, which most probably haven’t taken place, for we would probably know something about it; or maybe it was so strictly kept a secret that we will never find out. [. . .] That’s why I don’t treat this film as political. I would rather call it poetical and I hope this is the way it will be perceived.”

About the Author

Wheeler Winston Dixon, Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is an internationally recognized scholar and writer of film history, theory and criticism. He is the author of thirty books and more than 100 articles on film, and appears regularly in national media outlets discussing film and culture trends. Frame by Frame is a collection of his thoughts on a number of those topics. All comments by Dixon on this blog are his own opinions.

In The National News

Wheeler Winston Dixon has been quoted by Fast Company, The New Yorker, The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, The Christian Science Monitor, US News and World Report, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The PBS Newshour, USA Today and other national media outlets on digital cinema, film and related topics - see the UNL newsroom at http://news.unl.edu/news-releases/1/ for more details.

UNL Film Studies Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon discusses the 2015 Ridley Scott film "The Martian," and the accuracy (and often inaccuracy) of science-fiction films at predicting real advancements in science and technology. […]